IOS Game Center Achievement Upload

Question

Is anybody aware of a way of uploading all the Achievements into Game Center within iTunes Connect?

I have about 30 achievements in 10 languages. That's a whole bunch of clicking, cutting and pasting to get the data from my source file into iTunesConnect. I notice there's a new feature to upload in app purchases. Is there something similar for achievements? Ideally there'd be a nice XML upload. Am I dreaming?

Thanks,

Dean.

Answer 1

To upload or verify leader boards and achievements in bulk you have to use a command line tool iTMSTransporter which is installed in your Xcode package here:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Application Loader.app/Contents/MacOS/itms/ bin 

You have to go to the directory where Transporter is installed in Terminal and use the various commands respectively. To use Transporter, you must have an iTunes Connect account with the Admin or Technical role.

WARNING! You have to use "./" before the command which isn't mentioned in the Apple guide, like:

./iTMSTransporter ...

After you download the .itmsp package open it with "Show package content" and find a metadata.xml file, you can edit and upload it back.

If you have earlier achievements or leader boards you have to leave as they are just attach the new ones contrary to the earlier post!

The trick comes with the pictures. If you have pictures you have to attach them to the itms package next to the metadata file, but you have to include the names etc in the metadata file. The best to make one achievement or leader board manually on iTunes Connect and download again the itms package and copy those data. Be careful not to change anything in the original data just attach the new information.

It works well, but you have to wait until the servers propagate the new data.

Answer 2

There is a command line tool called "iTunes Connect Transporter" o just 'Transporter' to do just this. To get started login to iTunes Connect, goto "Manage Your Apps" and at the bottom there are several links. Under "Deliver of your Apps" you need the PDF files "Transporter User Guide" (the link to download Transporter is in this PDF) and "App Metadata Specification". With Transporter you can manage Game-Center Leaderboards and Achievements, and also all kinds of In-App Purchases.

To get you started try iTMSTransporter -m lookupMetadata ... (check the guide) to download existing IAP, Leaderboads and Achievements, and see the structure of the XML file you have to edit (you edit it with the Xcode editor). Everything will be downloaded to an .itmsp file which is just a package (iTunes package). You can enter into this package by ctrl-clicking the file and selecting "Show contents of package". Then you can add, edit all the contents of this package before uploading.

Also, I recommend running iTMSTransporter -m diagnostic to see if you have the required ports open.

I've used it and it works great. It takes a lot of time to configure a script to create the XML file the first time, but in the long run you save a LOT of time (and probably you do less mistakes too).

UPDATE: Since this June 2013 iTMSTrasporter added the ability to upload app metadata (localized titles, descriptions, what’s new text, keywords, and screenshots, as well as territory rights, pricing, and availability), In-App-Purchase information and screenshots, hosted content (which I haven't used), and interval pricing (for the app itself and for IAP products). This makes iTMSTrasporter much more powerful.

By the way, when you introduce keywords you are only allowed 100 characters, and you can save a few characters by doing without spaces. So instead of: "keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, ..." you can put "keyword1,keyword2,keyword3,..." and it works.

Finally, a minor problem I encountered, if you create some Achievements or Leaderboards manually through iTunes Connect, and then try to reload or update some Achievements with iTMSTransporter, it will give you an error. But, if you create them with iTMSTransporter then you can update them without any problem as many times as you want.

I hope it helps!!